


the play's the thing

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: American Civil War, Angst, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Humor, References to Shakespeare, Trauma, play-acting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-15
Updated: 2018-09-15
Packaged: 2019-07-12 14:53:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15997538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: She preferred rum, but the blockade made it hard to get.





	the play's the thing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tortoiseshells](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tortoiseshells/gifts).
  * Inspired by [her eye discourses](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15947156) by [tortoiseshells](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tortoiseshells/pseuds/tortoiseshells). 



“Romeo and Juliet” as performed at Mansion House was much improved with a tot of whiskey, Bridget thought. She wondered how much better it could have been if she’d passed her flask around to the players, if the liquor would have taken the place of paint and foot-lights. Should it have loosened tongues that stumbled over the Bard, kept Welles from freezing stock-still when Cibber cleared his throat? Perhaps. Merry they were not, though Fortune’s favorites, well enough to drape wool blankets round their shoulders and pretend twice; that they were in Verona, that they were home, in a theatrical or a theater, that the War was a memory or a figment of imagination to be brushed aside.

Foster enjoyed himself without any additional encouragement, watching the pretty Yankee nurse more than the actors, the men he’d saved from miserable ends. Mary von Olnhausen looked tired, in a way that only another woman would notice, just as only another widow noticed how she’d given up her name and title to the hospital. Happy enough, so she must not have allowed to herself she was falling in love with Foster. The chaplain had clapped heartily enough at the end, so Foster must have convinced him of something. Dr. Summers, playing his fiddle as the unexpected entr’acte made little Emma Green smile softly, melancholy gone from her gaze for the space of a dozen measures, balm for anyone who care to look at her.

Anne was sulking in her room. Next time, they must do the Scottish play and let her swan about as Lady Macbeth. Sarah Siddons couldn’t mind, nor Byron Hale when he saw her draped about with an old crimson silk curtain for a queen’s mantle. There were plays enough to last them the whole of the War, words enough to transport them without the hangover of the rotgut whiskey, the aftertaste of tears and chicory. Bridget might even tread the boards herself if Mary asked. She wouldn’t need to act _Double, double toil and trouble…_

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by tortoiseshells great "her eye discourses," and bringing in the perspectives of a few people we missed. I still couldn't find a way to invite Samuel.
> 
> Sarah Siddons (née Kemble; 5 July 1755 – 8 June 1831)was a Welsh-born actress, the best-known tragedienne of the 18th century. She was the elder sister of John Philip Kemble, Charles Kemble, Stephen Kemble, Ann Hatton, and Elizabeth Whitlock, and the aunt of Fanny Kemble. She was most famous for her portrayal of the Shakespearean character, Lady Macbeth, a character she made her own.
> 
> The title is Shakespeare, but Hamlet. "The Scottish play" is Macbeth and that is the conventional way actors refer to it, based on superstition of unleashing a curse with the proper title.


End file.
